


A Fire Infolding

by AconitumNapellus



Series: All The King's Men [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Healing, Pre-Slash, Recovery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 00:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16923453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Sequel to All The King's Men. Illya is recovering from being tortured by Ezekiel, but he has a way to go. Meanwhile, there's always Angelique...This is gen and a little f/m, but really it's utterly pre-slash.





	A Fire Infolding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lindafishes8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindafishes8/gifts).



Illya is humming with pain. He’s too full of the drugs to make much sound and too full of pain to stay quiet, so he lies there in the swirling water and hums with the pain as someone eases the bandages from his skin. The feeling of it fills his head, pushing right out at the edges of his skull. His pain is something so huge that it must be filling the entire room.

‘All right, Mr Kuryakin, all right,’ the nurse is saying, far away.

He clenches his hand tightly, eyes closed, as she peels a little more dressing from his side. There are fingers in his hand, fingers covered with the thin skin of a latex glove, he thinks. He’s gripping at them as if he were trying to stop himself from falling. He wasn’t aware of holding anyone’s hand, but he looks through slitted eyes, dizzy, and the room forms around him, something distinct and separate from his pain. It’s a shock to see it there, all the straight lines, the lights, the white walls and the plumbing pipes running across them. It’s a shock to find that anything exists outside his pain.

That hand is holding so tightly to his, or he is holding tightly to it. He sees a man in a white coat, sitting on something near the head of the bath. It must be him holding his hand. He doesn’t know who he is, but he doesn’t care. A hand to hold is a good thing. He could cry like a child, and the hand anchors him to some kind of promise of outside support.

The nurse is leaning over the bath, her hands in the water.

‘That’s one. Are you ready for the next?’

She doesn’t wait for his answer, but starts to ease the next dressing off. He sobs out pain, and curls his fingers hard against that hand. Another hand is stroking the hair from his forehead, fingers without a glove, but it’s the same man, he thinks. A man sitting there, holding one of his hands, and stroking his forehead. He doesn’t care. He’s beyond dignity, beyond awkwardness. He’s naked and alive with pain, fluid with pain, fluid with the painkillers that slur his mind.

‘Napoleon,’ he says; can’t help himself. That’s the word he uses when he’s in trouble, when he’s in pain. He calls out  _ Napoleon _ , and Napoleon comes and helps him. But there’s a great absence of Napoleon in this room. They don’t let friends attend treatments like this. Why would Napoleon want to sit in on a treatment like this? Why would he want to see him, incapable and half-blinded with pain, going through something like this?

‘They’re very deep tissue burns,’ the nurse says, her tone abstracted as she concentrates on her work. ‘That’s why they’re so painful.’

_ That iron against him, pressing relentlessly against his side. The burning heat pushing down through the layers of skin, cooking his skin like a slab of meat... _

He blinks and gasps. She hasn’t noticed him fading out. She’s intent on what she’s doing, her head bent, her neck a graceful curve. If he weren’t in so much pain perhaps he’d notice that she was young and pretty. He can see that she’s young and pretty, and the way her lip is a little bitten in in her concentration could be attractive, but he can’t think of anything like that, because the only thing filling his mind is the pain. Anyway, he’s ruined, isn’t he? That man took the hot iron and pressed it between his legs, and held it there, and all that delicate tissue was burnt so terribly that it is a mass of bandages with a catheter leading from somewhere in their depths. Now the bandages are soaked with water, but he fears her peeling them away more than he fears anything in the world. Right now, that fear is all consuming.

Another searing explosion of pain, and he swears, and he realises he’s holding that man’s hand so tightly he must be hurting him.

‘No, it’s all right,’ he says from some distance away. ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’

He should give some attention to the owner of that hand. He turns his head against the pillowed head of the bath and looks at him through eyes that are blurred somehow. Maybe they’re blurred with tears. It’s a man perhaps in his forties, sitting there in a featureless white tunic, dark haired, favouring him with a sympathetic smile. Perhaps his only job there is to hold the hands of patients. Perhaps he’s some kind of technician associated with the whirlpool bath. Anyway, all he’s doing now is sitting on a stool and holding Illya’s hand as he floats in the surging waters around him.

‘Next one,’ the nurse says, and Illya wants to scream at her to stop. It’s too much. It hurts too much. He went through so much pain, and now he’s being tortured just as surely as in that room. He can’t get out of this tub. He doesn’t think he could climb out alone. He can hardly walk, because for some reason when he tries he totters and wavers and everything begins to blur. So what could he do? Where could he go?

‘It must be an exciting job, being an agent for the U.N.C.L.E.,’ the hand-holding man says to him. It’s obvious that he’s trying to distract him. Obvious or not, it’s a kind gesture.

‘Exciting,’ Illya says through gritted teeth. She’s tugging at a dressing on his stomach and it feels like she’s trying to peel away his skin. ‘Yes. I – I get to see a lot of the world.’

‘Where were you last?’ the man asks him.

Illya blinks. The room is so clinical. White ceiling. Strip lights. Pipes and plumbing. He could be in another world. His body has been transported into another world by pain and drugs, and this man’s hand is connecting him to the mundane reality of the hospital he’s living in.

‘I was – Before – ’ He feels so muddled. Last he was in a house outside of New York City, hanging from chains, being burnt.

‘Last time out of the country.’

‘Kazakhstan,’ Illya says, remembering dry, clear air, and dust, and heat. God, the thought of being under that sun with these burns… ‘I was – ’ He makes a strangled noise, trying not to swear. She’s peeling his skin from his body. She must be.

The man’s hand squeezes back on his. ‘Kazakhstan?’

‘Y-yes. I – They needed a Russian speaker.’

‘I didn’t know they spoke Russian in Kazakhstan,’ he says. He sounds genuinely interested.

‘About – ’ He grunts out pain as she peels back another few inches of dressing. ‘About half – half the population.’ He feels so dizzy. ‘I – I can’t – ’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t – ’

He’s fighting sickness. What would happen if he were sick in this bath? Wouldn’t they have to get him out, drain all the water, and start again? He can’t bear the thought of moving.

As if the man understands, he picks up a cardboard bowl and holds it before his mouth.

‘Just in case,’ he says.

Maybe his face has gone that awful colour that precedes vomiting. Maybe that’s it. But with a force of will he holds it in.

‘I’m all right,’ he says.

His mouth is full of saliva. The man offers him a little cup of water, and he drinks.

‘Kazakhstan,’ the man says. ‘Why were you there?’

Illya breathes in air which is full of moisture. He wants cold, fresh air, but there’s none in this room.

‘I can’t say,’ he says.

He shouldn’t really have said he was there at all. He had rubbed stain into his skin to make himself look tanned, and covered his hair, worn the local clothes. He had managed to fit in. He had got in and out without notice, and brought home what he was supposed to bring home. He shouldn’t talk about it in front of hospital staff, even a man who is holding his hand and treating him so kindly.

That kind of mission is the perfect one. He had got through without even a scratch. He gets hurt often, but he doesn’t court injury. He doesn’t like pain.

‘All right, Mr Kuryakin. I’m going to do the more sensitive ones now,’ the nurse tells him.

He breathes hard.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to leave those?’ he asks. He can’t quite make his voice sound as if he’s joking.

‘No, I can’t,’ she replies. ‘I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt. Would you like a bit more morphine?’

‘I would like a lot more morphine,’ he says honestly.

She regards him for a moment, and he looks back into her face, into her grey eyes. She is pretty. Not quite Napoleon’s type, perhaps, but pretty to him. What a weird situation this is, to be lying naked in a bath like this with a woman tending to him so intimately. He doesn’t even feel embarrassed. He just feels its strangeness.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Kurt, will you watch him at the head end? He’s going to get a bit more woozy.’

So the man’s name is Kurt. Woozy sounds good. He would like to be as far away from reality as possible.

‘Of course I’ll watch him,’ Kurt says. ‘I won’t let you drown, Mr Kuryakin.’

‘Illya,’ he murmurs.

She’s pushing a little more morphine into him and everything is becoming softer. The pain is still bad, but it’s further away. The nurse is tugging and pushing at the dressings down between his legs, and he doesn’t know what to feel. He doesn’t want to be touched. It hurts so much. Somewhere, drifting beyond the fog of the drugs, he can feel the pain, he can hear his incoherent cries. That hand keeps holding his and Kurt is murmuring to him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying but that voice is some kind of an anchor. There’s water on his face but he’s not slipping underwater. It must be tears.

  


((O))

  


It’s all very far away. He doesn’t remember coming out of the bath and getting back into bed, but here he is, looking up at the polystyrene ceiling again, his body throbbing with pain, his mouth dry. The bed is swaying beneath him. Is that tiredness? Stress? Pain? Whatever it is, it’s like lying on the deck of a boat, and he remembers how much he hates boats. That awful raft, sitting there dressed as a down to heel Slavic ship’s cook, Napoleon in the guise of a rough sailor. It was a funny time, sitting on that tiny floating island for hours in the middle of an endless ocean, waiting and hoping for a ship to come by. So many things could have gone wrong. Tides and currents can be predicted on large scales, but not when it comes down to the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey chance of a speck of a raft meeting a slightly larger speck of a ship in an ocean that spreads to the horizon and far beyond in all directions. They could have easily been lost, drifting until they died. They should have brought a radio. They could have thrown it overboard as soon as they sighted the ship. But that had been one of Waverly’s more callous plans. Sometimes he feels that he and his partner are utterly dispensable.

He’s not on that raft now, of course. He tries to focus on the ceiling. He was seeing the blue sky and shreds of clouds, and feeling the salt swell of the ocean beneath him. He’s on land, in a room on land, and nothing is moving. It’s all in his mind.

There’s a sudden cramp in his calf, and he gasps out pain. How long had he half-stood, half-hung from those chains in that room? There’s the memory of it in his shoulder muscles, in his back, in the muscles of his calves and thighs. There’s the memory of it in the bruises around his ankles, and the worse bruises and split skin of his wrists. There’s pain in his neck and his spine.

He wants to curl himself up so he can rub his calf but he can’t bear the thought of moving. Every time he moves the scabs of his burns bend and flex and the pain is unbearable. He lies there and just lets the pain in his calf run, persistent and so different to the burns.

‘Illya.’

He turns his head. Napoleon. Of course. He hadn’t known he was there.

‘What’s hurting?’ Napoleon asks.

‘Calf,’ Illya says. ‘Cramp.’

‘Let me rub it,’ Napoleon offers, and without waiting for an answer he reaches his hand under the blankets and starts to knead at Illya’s calf with strong, firm fingers. For a moment the pain is worse, but then it releases, and Illya lets out a long breath. The other pain, that hot, stinging, burning pain, comes to the fore again. He’s drifting in such a strange place, full of pain, cradled by pain.

‘Is that better?’ Napoleon asks.

‘Yes,’ he says. His voice sounds thick and distant. ‘Better.’

Napoleon smiles at him, his smile like the sun on a spring day. He feels as though the pain were a veil, and he’s seeing everything, even Napoleon’s smile, through that veil.

‘How are you feeling, partner?’

He lies there, unable to answer. He has no idea how to answer, how to vocalise his pain. After a time he realises Napoleon is waiting for him to speak, and he says, ‘Sorry. The painkillers. Very drowsy.’

‘I can imagine. Are they helping with the pain at all?’

He presses his lips tighter, and the burns on them sting.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. That’s a question that’s hard to answer. ‘Makes it feel further away.’

‘But still bad?’ Napoleon asks.

He tries to smile, and his lips hurt.

‘Terrible,’ he says.

It is terrible. It’s dizzyingly terrible, and there’s no escape from it. Even when he sleeps the pain creeps into his dreams. He tries to escape it, to crawl away, claw away, run away, but there’s no way to escape. In dreams it’s worse, in a way, because the pain starts to fill everything, and there’s no way to distract himself. He’s left crawling across the ground or hanging in chains, and he’s utterly powerless.

No wonder he feels as though he were on a boat. No wonder he feels faint even lying down.

‘The nurse mentioned they had you in the bath earlier,’ Napoleon says. ‘That must have helped.’

He makes a little noise, half-uncontrolled.

‘Yin and yang,’ he says.

‘Huh?’

‘Water helped. But they had to take the dressings off in the water.’

‘Oh,’ Napoleon says, and Illya thinks he understands.

He lies there, feeling as though he were floating. He wants to lie flatter than he is. He feels sick.

‘Pillow,’ he says, and Napoleon asks him, ‘What about your pillow? Do you want another. Do you want to sit up?’

He feels cold and so distant from everything. It must be the drugs. Painkillers are such strange things.

‘No,’ he says. ‘No. Lie down. I want to – ’

‘You’re already lying down, partner,’ Napoleon tells him, and he touches a hand to Illya’s forehead. ‘Are you all right?’

His fingers feel so hot.

‘Illya, are you okay?’ Napoleon asks him.

‘Need to lie down,’ Illya says. He just wants to ask Napoleon to take the pillow away, but he doesn’t know how to ask. He feels as if he’s running a race, as if his breath is starting to jerk in his lungs, as if he’s run so hard he needs to be sick.

‘God, Illya,’ Napoleon says suddenly, because he’s vomiting, and Napoleon is pulling him onto his side, and all the burns scream.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says, and he tries to talk, but everything becomes a blur. Suddenly he feels so ill. He feels so far away from the world. There’s a stampede somewhere, footsteps all over the floor. Alarms. ‘Tacky,’ he hears someone say, and he wonders what is tacky. He feels so awful it’s impossible to bear. He tries to talk, somehow. He’s not sure how to talk. He’s scared.

‘Dying,’ he says. He wants to make it a question but he doesn’t know how.

Someone is trying to make her voice very loud and clear, but he can’t work out what she’s saying. There’s a hand on his arm.

‘Dying,’ he asks again, and the voice replies, but he feels so awful he can’t understand her words.

  


((O))

  


‘Jesus Christ,’ Napoleon is breathing. ‘Jesus Christ.’

They tried to get him out of the room, and at first he wouldn’t move. He wanted to be there for Illya. He had to be there for Illya, to be a stable presence as he fell away. But they had pushed him backwards and someone had told him, ‘He doesn’t know you’re here,’ and finally he had let a young nurse hustle him out through the door, because Illya’s life was more important than his need to be at his partner’s side. It was hard to fight to stay with a crutch and casts, anyway.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he says under his breath.

The corridor wall is hard against his back, hard and cool, as cold as Illya had suddenly become. It feels about as alive as Illya’s skin had felt. He had changed so quickly, going from relatively alert, if muted by drugs, to distant and confused and cold, his heart racing, his breathing racing out of control.

He steps back and looks through the little window in the door. There seem to be so many people crowded around Illya’s bed. There are tubes and wires and still those damn alarms are going off, and he wishes he could smash all the alarm bells in the world. Illya seems such a small presence in the middle of all of that, when he catches glimpses of him through the moving medical team. His skin looks almost grey, a terrifying sight. Illya is such a small thing in the middle of all the tubes and machines, and he is desperate to know what’s happening, but he keeps himself on the other side of the door, just watching.

After a while a nurse peels off and comes outside, opening and closing the door very quietly.

‘Is he – ’ Napoleon begins, but he doesn’t want to complete the question. Illya isn’t dead, he’s sure. He’s seen how they react when someone dies, and it’s not like that.

‘He’s stable,’ the nurse tells him quietly. She puts a hand on his arm. ‘He’s not conscious, Mr Solo, so he won’t know you’re here. Why don’t you come with me?’

Napoleon casts a look at the door again. He doesn’t want to leave. He feels like he needs to be on guard even if he can’t protect Illya from what he’s currently fighting against.

‘Just a little way down the corridor,’ the nurse assures him, and he follows her, hobbling with his crutch, glancing back all the way. They reach a wider space and she makes him sit on one of a little row of soft chairs. ‘Sue, could you bring Mr Solo some coffee?’ she says to someone else, but Napoleon isn’t really taking any notice.

‘What happened?’ Napoleon asks. ‘He was just talking to me – ’

‘Sepsis,’ she says simply. ‘Mr Solo – ’

A woman presses a cardboard cup of coffee into his hand, and he takes it and sips without thinking. It’s sweet with sugar.

‘Mr Solo, I won’t lie about how serious this is,’ the nurse continues. ‘Sepsis can kill. Patients can suffer organ failure, and sometimes there isn’t anything we can do. Mr Kuryakin has suffered burns over a large area of his body. But he is young and extremely fit, and those are both factors in his favour.’

‘Stubborn,’ Napoleon murmurs, although he feels cold and empty at what she has said. His mind is reeling.

She laughs softly. ‘Yes, he’s very stubborn, isn’t he? So, he has a number of things in his favour. We’ll identify the infection and start him on appropriate antibiotics within an hour, and he can start to fight this.’

Hope, then. There’s hope. Illya is young and he is fit, and there are such blessed, beautiful things in the world as antibiotics.

‘Can I go back in there?’ Napoleon asks, and she shakes her head.

‘Not right now,’ she tells him firmly. ‘I’m sorry. You will be able to see him later, I promise, but not right now. Really, there’s no point in your being here right now. You’d be better going home and getting some sleep.’

‘Sleep,’ he echoes. He feels dazed. He’s not even sure what time of day it is. What if he leaves and Illya dies?

‘Mr Solo, you’re injured yourself,’ she reminds him, and he glances down at the casts on wrist and ankle. ‘You’d be better getting some rest.’

He looks at his watch and sees it’s almost six. He doesn’t want to rest. He feels so full of energy he could run a marathon. He could go back to headquarters, but he doesn’t know if he’d be able to concentrate on work. But that’s better than going back to an empty apartment, surely, and HQ is closer to the hospital than his apartment is.

‘You’re sure I can’t go in to see him?’ he asks, but he’s too distracted to turn on the charm, and she shakes her head.

‘Go home,’ she says. ‘You will be called if anything changes, I promise.’

Hospital promises are never reliable, though. They’re busy places, and he’s not next of kin. He’s just a friend, no more than a friend. They’ll call him if they remember, if someone has time.

He passes back through the corridor to leave, and looks in through the little window. Illya is flat in the bed, a breathing tube between his parted lips, his face almost the same colour as the white sheets.

  


((O))

  


He doesn’t know what to do once he’s out of the hospital doors. He turns towards headquarters, then towards his apartment. He walks half a block, then turns back and stands there, looking at the great rise of the hospital building, with Illya inside. His ankle aches and itches inside the cast. He stands for a moment while people hurry past him on either side, and then a raindrop hits him, and then another, and another, and suddenly he is standing in a downpour, without an umbrella, or even a newspaper to hold over his head. 

‘Get in.’

It’s a low, beautiful car, a C3 Corvette in metallic grey. Angelique’s hair is so platinum white, her clothes so dark, it’s as if he’s looking into a black and white film. 

‘He didn’t make it, then. I’m sorry,’ she says. 

‘What?’ he asks, startled, then realises she can’t possibly know more than he does. She’s just drawing inferences from his current state. 

‘No,’ he says. ‘I mean, yes, he made it. Yes, he’s alive.’

‘Well, I’m glad,’ she says. ‘But really, Napoleon, he’s such a dour little man. I can’t approve of your spending so much time with such an enormous wet blanket. Every time he looks at me I feel like he’s running a blade through my heart. It’s as if he’s jealous. Of  _ me,  _ Napoleon. Honestly.’

Napoleon feels a funny little stumble in his heartbeat. Illya, jealous of Angelique? But it is raining hard, drumming hard on the hollow curve of the car roof, and he walks round, trailing his fingers on the wet fibreglass shell, and gets into the passenger seat. He gets in, shoving his crutch awkwardly in front of his knees. Angelique winds up her window, and suddenly they are the only two in a little microcosm, the rain smearing down the windows, the buildings outside blurred and wavering as if seen through tears.

She kisses him. Of course he kisses her back. And then they are driving, crawling through the busy streets. If there had been any threat he could open the door and step out into the traffic without a moment’s thought. Everything is moving so slowly.

‘You’ll come back to my place, of course,’ Angelique says, and he shakes his head.

‘Not your place, no, my dear.’

‘Then your place?’

He smiles. ‘You know me better than that. Take the first two rights.’

‘Then a left,’ she says, well practised.

‘Then we’ll flip a coin,’ he says. ‘Heads for right, tails for left.’

They find a liquor store in their practised, random way, and then a hotel. Angelique books them in as Mr and Mrs Smith, and the desk clerk doesn’t look for a moment as if he believes that this couple with no luggage but a bottle in a paper bag are married. But he gives them the room, just for a night, and they take the elevator, and then they are alone. It’s not the kind of place Napoleon would have chosen, but there’s a bed and an en suite. It’s enough.

It’s like a chess game. It always is. Angelique takes possession of the bed. Napoleon finds two glasses and pours them each a drink. He sits on the edge of the mattress while Angelique lounges, and they both drink. She sips, but today he downs half the glass in one mouthful, and she tilts an eyebrow and says, ‘Really, Napoleon. I thought your funny little friend was all right? Why are you so terribly tense?’

He doesn’t want to talk about Illya. He doesn’t want to talk about the uranium. He doesn’t want to talk at all. What he does want to do, is fuck. That’s really all he wants to do.

‘Napoleon, darling,’ Angelique says. Her tone is pouty, a little irritated. ‘You know, I didn’t come here for you to sit there staring into space. He’s not all right, then?’

Napoleon sighs. ‘He’s – not well,’ he says. That’s all he says. He takes another swallow of the drink, and his glass is empty. He sets it aside. It wouldn’t do to get too drunk. Angelique is beautiful, sultry, available, and very, very dangerous.

‘Let me help you forget about him,’ Angelique purrs.

She’s easing a thin strap down her shoulder. Her flesh is very white, a pale rose against the blazing silver white of her hair. She’s biting a lip just a very little into her mouth, then she takes another sip of her drink and sets down the glass, and pats a hand on the mattress.

It doesn’t take long to fuck her. Usually he can make it last for a long time, but not tonight. He spends some time kissing her, stroking fingers over the sculptured lines of her body, teasing off her clothes, but even with one wrist in plaster and one ankle in plaster the fucking is hard and fierce and over far too soon. He lies, sweaty, against Angelique’s body, feeling the lines of her beneath him, feeling the soft swells of her breasts and the tickle of her hair. He’s thinking about Illya. Even as his cock slips from her body he’s thinking about Illya, still and small and pale in that hospital bed.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you tonight,’ Angelique says, but there’s a strange tenderness in the way she strokes a finger down his cheek.

He wishes he could talk to her. He wishes there were anyone he could talk to. He sat there in that chair and watched Illya being burnt without mercy all over his body. He sat there and heard Illya scream, watched him vomit from the pain, saw him piss himself from the pain. He sat there, and there was  _ nothing  _ he could do. Nothing except tell Ezekiel what he wanted to know.

He rolls off her, and the room feels just a notch too cold. He goes into the en suite and washes himself down, and a moment later she’s in there too, attending to very human needs. She’s much more the animal after sex. She stops being a platinum goddess and becomes flesh and blood. It’s a funny, domestic little scene as she sits on the toilet and he stands at the basin washing, and then hands her a cloth.

Back in the bedroom, he dresses scantily in his underwear and slips under the bedcovers. He taps his fingers on his wrist cast and listens to the hollow sound. He thinks of Illya, flat out in the hospital bed, a tube in his mouth, fighting invisible bacteria in his body that were let in through his ravaged skin.

‘He’s not well at all,’ he finds himself saying, when Angelique comes back in. He looks at the blank television screen on the other side of the room. This is a miserable place. The décor is awful. ‘He’s unconscious. He was talking one minute, then – ’ He sighs hard. ‘Sepsis. He went downhill so fast...’

‘Well, that’s not exactly your fault, is it, darling?’ Angelique asks him. She slips into the bed as naked as the day she was born.

‘I was the one with the information Ezekiel wanted,’ Napoleon murmurs.

‘Well, you know what would have happened if you’d told him,’ Angelique shrugs. ‘One bullet for you, and one for your friend. You wouldn’t exactly be better off, would you?’

‘Illya could be dying,’ he says.

Angelique calls room service. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was until she’s ordering meals and drinks up to the room. He doesn’t really ponder on how strange this is, but Angelique has never ordered food before. Usually there is just fucking, and then either more fucking, or a parting of ways. Tonight there is food, dessert, brandy, and then they sit in the bed side by side, and Angelique sighs.

‘I suppose I’m not going to get anything fun out of you tonight,’ she says rather petulantly.

‘No,’ Napoleon says softly. It’s unusual. He should be ready again by now, but he just feels tired. ‘No, not tonight,’ he says.

‘Mama did always tell me off for being a greedy girl,’ Angelique sighs, and Napoleon half smiles.

‘Thank you for shooting him,’ he says, and he means it. Shooting Ezekiel and giving him that pick has been the kindest, most generous thing he has ever known Angelique to do. But she has a horror of burning, he knows. He doesn’t know what’s happened in her past, but she has a horror of burning. Maybe she felt for Illya in a way she will never admit to. 

Angelique shrugs. ‘He was a vile creature, anyway. Some people don’t deserve the life they’re given, don’t you think?’

Maybe they don’t, Napoleon thinks. Maybe Ezekiel never should have been gifted with life. If he hadn’t, Illya wouldn’t be where he is now.

  


((O))

  


He wakes bleary-eyed and confused, looking around the room in puzzlement for a moment before he remembers where he is. Against every self imposed rule, he had fallen asleep with Angelique in the room. But he’s still in that room, and Angelique is gone. He can smell her perfume in the sheets. There’s a bleached hair on the pillow. But Angelique is gone.

He looks at his watch. God. It’s almost half past eight in the morning. The hospital had promised to call him if anything changed, but how could they have called him with him here, in an anonymous hotel room? No one had known where he was. Illya could have died in the night…

He’s almost out through reception before the stony-faced desk clerk catches him and asks him politely to settle the bill. Of course Angelique has left without donating anything to the cause. There’s the room service to pay for, and a bottle of champagne that he doesn’t remember ever seeing. But he pays, because it’s not so much money, and it’s faster than arguing. Last night’s rain has stopped, and he finds himself out on the street in a crumpled suit, hailing a cab, scrabbling for the last few dollars in his wallet to pay the fare.

  


((O))

  


Illya is alive; unconscious, but stable. It’s a fight to be let in, but eventually the powers that be relent, and he finds himself sitting on a chair by Illya’s bed, listening to the gentle bleeping of the machines. The only mercy is that in unconsciousness he must be unaware of the pain.

‘He’s breathing on his own,’ the nurse had told him as she let him in. ‘We managed to take him off the ventilator at about three a.m., and he’s been breathing well ever since. He’s responding very well to the antibiotics. He’s fighting hard.’

Of course Illya is fighting hard. He has never known anyone as determined as Illya. But he’s still unconscious in the bed, still pale and mottled and looking so, so ill. His temperature is high and there’s sweat on his face. He may be breathing alone, but his breathing is laboured. It all feels like too much. It feels like his fault, like Napoleon’s fault, because he was the one with the information, and Illya was the one who was tortured.

Napoleon takes Illya’s hand and holds it. Perhaps Illya would laugh at him for sitting here holding his hand, but he doesn’t know how else to connect with him. He seems so far away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘God, Illya, I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything. I’m sorry it took Angelique coming in to save you.’

He wonders if he’ll ever be able to dispel the guilt. What could he have done? After all, he had proven that the chains were stronger than his bones. He’s seen the cracks on the x-rays, and he can still see the dark, angry bruises on the wrist and ankle that don’t have casts. Would it have been better if he had broken all four limbs? That would be ridiculous. It hadn’t helped at all in the end. Perhaps if he had he wouldn’t have been able to use the pick to open the locks.

In the end, there was nothing else he could have done. It had taken Angelique to save him, and that had been that. It’s funny how often Angelique saves him. They are mortal enemies, but somehow fucking her makes him feel alive. Perhaps it’s like the crazed gourmets who eat the Japanese puffer fish for the ultimate dining experience. Perhaps it’s like the lunatics who go over Niagara in barrels just to prove that they can. It’s all about getting as close to death as possible and defeating it. If there’s fucking involved, if there’s a warm, receptive body, all the better. He wishes he could have done better last night. He had thought that was what he needed, to spend all night in a private orgy, fucking out his worry and fear. But in the end the thought of Illya had intruded too strongly. Even with Angelique, pliable and receptive and dangerous on that bed, the thought of Illya had intruded too strongly.

He sighs. He goes to rub his free hand over his face and hits himself in the forehead with the cast, and gives a snorting laugh. It’s all ridiculous, really. Sleeping with the enemy, getting themselves into these kind of situations, using their bodies as barriers to protect the innocents of the world. What a ridiculous situation. But he would break limbs again to try to save Illya. If he could snap every rib in his chest as a kind of sacrifice to the gods, in exchange for Illya’s health, he would do it.

It’s all so invisible, so far from his ability to help. Those microscopic, invisible pathogens racing around Illya’s body, the microscopic, invisible antibiotics racing in to help him fight. It’s all on a scale completely divorced from the human, and he hates to be so incapable of action.

‘Come on, Illya,’ he murmurs, because if he can’t do anything to help he can at least stand on the sidelines and give encouraging words.

Illya stirs, stirs like a man asleep rather than a man unconscious, and murmurs something unintelligible.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon says, because there’s just the smallest amount of pressure squeezing against his hand. Illya’s fingers are flexing just a little.

Illya moans. The pain must be hitting him now, now he’s closer to consciousness.

‘Pol’yon,’ he murmurs.

There’s sweat on his forehead. His skin is pallid. His burnt lips are crusted, pale behind the scabs.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon replies, squeezing back on his hand. ‘Hey, Illya. Can you hear me?’

His eyes blink a little, opening to narrow slits of blue.

‘Hey, partner,’ Napoleon says.

‘Dying,’ Illya says, and there’s fear in his voice.

‘No,’ Napoleon tells him firmly. ‘You’re not dying. You’ve got a bit of an infection, but you’re all right.’

He doesn’t know if that’s true. There’s still space for things to go downhill again. But surely consciousness and a kind of lucidity are good?

There are tears squeezing from Illya’s eyes. Everything of the agent, of the adult man, seems to have been stripped away, and he’s crying.

‘Hurts so much,’ Illya says through the tears. ‘God...’

‘I know,’ Napoleon replies. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

He can’t imagine the pain. A single, small burn can be so painful. He can’t imagine that magnified to the place that Illya is in right now.

‘I’ll call the nurse,’ Napoleon says, and Illya says, childlike, ‘Don’t go.’

‘I don’t need to go,’ Napoleon assures him. ‘The call button is right here.’

He presses it, and waits. He uses his handkerchief to dab away some of the tears and the crust from Illya’s eyes, and then he holds his hand again, and waits. A nurse comes in, bright and efficient, and after a moment the painkillers have been increased and she’s taking Illya’s temperature and noting down his vitals and talking about changing the dressings.

Illya’s hand squeezes a little harder on Napoleon’s and he murmurs, ‘No, no, just leave – ’

‘Illya, they can’t leave the dressings,’ Napoleon tells him clearly. ‘Be a good little Russian, now. You have an infection. It’s important to keep the wounds clean.’

‘Don’t want to,’ Illya sobs, and he’s like a child. Again, there’s nothing Napoleon can do. Again, he’s helpless to protect Illya from the pain. He lifts Illya’s hand and kisses his knuckles and says, ‘I need to go now, tovarisch, while they see to your dressings. I’ll be back as soon as I’m allowed. But you’re a very popular person right now, and everyone wants to have a piece of you. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’

  


((O))

  


He feels so confused and dazed. Everything hurts, every joint, every bone. His lungs feel heavy and there’s nausea in his stomach and he’s just incapable of controlling himself. It’s hard to control yourself when you feel so weak. There are tears running from his eyes and he can’t do anything about it. He can see through the blur of the tears, and everything is real and there, but it’s as if he’s on a different plain of reality, because the feeling of illness is taking him away from everything.

He wishes Napoleon could have stayed. Napoleon is the one solid thing in this world of pain and helplessness. It should be easy enough for Napoleon to insist on staying, but he’s listened to the nurse, of course, and left as he’s supposed to, and Illya is alone, at this woman’s mercy. He feels like he needs her mercy. He needs it so much.

‘Thirsty,’ he says.

He feels so hot and his throat is like a desert.

‘All right, Mr Kuryakin,’ she replies in a brisk but gentle tone.

He listens to the sound of water pouring, and the little click as she sets the jug back down. It’s like being under the sea, subsumed in this terrible feeling of illness, of pain, this looseness in his emotions that makes him unable not to cry.

‘You’ll need to raise your head a little,’ she says, and starts helping him, putting another pillow under his head. It feels like too much, like he’s suddenly vertical, even though he’s hardly raised up at all. Everything is swimming.

‘All right, Mr Kuryakin. Take a sip,’ she says, and she’s pressing the glass against his lips.

The water feels so cool, so wonderful. He swallows, and swallows again and again. He feels as if he hasn’t drunk in years. He has no idea how long he was unconscious for. He’s like Sleeping Beauty waking after a century of coma. He swallows and swallows until the glass is empty, and she’s putting it down, saying, ‘Well, you were thirsty, weren’t you, honey?’

He’s still thirsty. He could drink another just like that, and another. But he asks, ‘How long – ’ He coughs a little. His voice sounds so weak and awful. His throat hurts from intubation. He knows that feeling. ‘How long was I unconscious?’

‘Only overnight,’ she tells him. ‘Only since your episode yesterday. You were intubated for a little while but we took that out during the night. You’ve been breathing very nicely on your own since. We’re getting the infection under control. You’re responding beautifully to the antibiotics. The perfect patient.’

‘Oh,’ he says.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had said he’d been out for weeks. Just overnight. It’s almost a disappointment. If he’d been unconscious for longer the burns would have had a chance to heal more. He’ll have to endure the pain for longer now. He has to endure the pain, and the feeling so, so ill.

‘Are you feeling bad?’ she asks him, touching a hand lightly to his forehead. ‘You want to lie flat again?’

‘Yes,’ he says. Then he asks a little desperately, ‘You don’t need to change the dressings?’

She takes the pillow out again, supporting his head with her hand so that it rests back softly on the mattress.

‘They will need to be checked, even if they’re not changed quite yet,’ she tells him. ‘I’m sorry. We have to be so careful about infection, Mr Kuryakin. You’re very vulnerable. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place. You have such a large surface area of your skin that’s damaged, and that’s all an avenue for infection to take hold.’

There isn’t anything he can say. He could plead and cry like a child, but that wouldn’t make them leave the bandages alone.

‘Whirlpool?’ he asks.

‘No,’ she tells him firmly. ‘No. I know it’s less painful in there but you’re not in a fit state for that at the moment. You need to be a bit stronger for that. You must want to stay in your comfy bed, huh?’

It doesn’t feel as comfortable as it should. It feels as if he’s been lying in it, sweating and hot and fevered, for days and days.

‘Smells,’ he says. ‘Sweat.’

Words feel like too much effort. It takes so much effort to form sentences in his mind and then speak them aloud.

‘Well, that’s what happens when you let yourself get ill,’ she tells him chidingly, jokingly. ‘We can change the bed. I’ll call another girl in and we’ll give you a sponge bath and change your sheets. You’ll feel fresher after that.’

‘All right,’ he says. He’s in a position of complete helplessness. He can’t even take care of washing himself. He feels too ill to care.

He lies there, listening to the clack of her shoes on the hard floor. She’s moving about the room, and then she goes to the door and calls someone in. They’re moving around the room like ghosts, just noises and fleeting awareness of their movement. Perhaps he’s fading in and out. He doesn’t know. Illness is such a selfish thing. It narrows the world down to a fish-bowl, the inside of the glass reflective and distorted. It makes sounds seem far away and unimportant or awful and far too close. It makes touches either nothing or agony.

He lies there while they wheel the trolley over to the bed and start to prepare him, carefully getting towels under his body, taking off the hospital gown, and covering him again with a sheet. Just that much movement is too much. It hurts. It all hurts, and he feels so ill. They fold back some of the sheet, and then there is a damp washcloth touching him, cool on his fevered skin. It’s nice, that soft wiping, cleaning away the sweat and taking some of the heat. Then he feels too cold, and he shivers, but someone is patting him dry with a towel. He lies there while they skirt around the dressings with great care, softly cleansing and patting him dry, cleansing and patting, until he has been cleaned all over, like a child’s doll. He makes little noises of pain when they have to move him or they come too close to the burns, little whimpers like a mewling cat. He feels so distant from them. He distances himself from them, because they’re cleaning around his damaged genitals, around his buttocks, and it’s odd and demeaning but at the same time he feels too ill to care.

He lies there while they dress him again, while they change the sheets beneath him and replace the sheets on top. Just those processes, that washing and changing of the sheets, has left him exhausted. He feels as though he’s been on a mission for days, awake for forty-eight hours, run a marathon.

‘You don’t have to do the dressings,’ he says again, pleading.

‘I’ll get the doctor to take a look,’ she tells him reassuringly. ‘I think they will need to be changed, but we can give you a little time. Okay? We can give you a little time. You just lie there and rest now.’

‘Yes,’ he says, because he can’t do anything but rest.

He wishes he felt sleepy, but he doesn’t. If he could sleep it would all go away. He just feels enormously tired, ill through every cell of his body. He lies there and listens to them draining the catheter bag and moving about the room cleaning up. He wonders when Napoleon will be back, but he can’t ask. They won’t know anyway. Napoleon isn’t obliged to spend all his time hovering at Illya’s side. He lies and daydreams that the doctor will come in and say his bandages don’t need changing. He daydreams that he’s well enough for the whirlpool bath, but he feels too, too ill, and the thought of it is upsetting, not pleasant. He’s so ridiculously close to tears. The pain is taking him so close to tears, and the illness breaks down the last barriers.

For the first time in a long time, he wants to be at home. Not his apartment in Manhattan, but  _ home _ , in Kyiv, lying in his own bed listening to the sounds of his mother and father in another room. He lies there, imagining himself in his bed in his parents’ bedroom, and the little noises he can hear are his mother tidying up and cleaning. He hears his father coming in through the door and taking off his shoes and hanging up his coat. He’s lying under the covers in his bed, feeling so ill, fevered. A hand rests on his forehead and he thinks it’s his mother’s hand, just lying there. It’s a good feeling. He imagines he can hear her voice. Someone is talking but he’s not listening to the words, just that female voice talking somewhere above him. Maybe he’s falling asleep.

  


((O))

  


He hasn’t had breakfast. Napoleon remembers that as he walks away from Illya’s room, trying to close his ears to the noises inside, to the nurse saying something and Illya half-crying. It’s awful to see him so undone by pain and illness. But he carries on walking away, right out of the hospital, and steps into the first diner he comes by. He doesn’t like dining alone. He wishes it were Illya sitting in the empty seat opposite him. He wishes it were Angelique. It’s a strange dance he shares with Angelique, but he could take even her company right now. He orders a stack of pancakes and coffee without giving much thought to what he wants to eat, or even to the pretty waitress who’s standing there noting down the order. He eats mechanically, feeling the warmth of the food and the heat of the coffee but tasting very little. His communicator whistles, and he answers it. It’s a girl in communications checking in to find out where he is. Of course, he’s supposed to be in work, isn’t he? It’s almost ten, and he should be in work.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbles through the communicator. ‘Listen, Patsy, will you give my apologies to Mr Waverly? I can’t concentrate on a damn thing this morning.’

‘How is Mr Kuryakin?’ she asks, even though Napoleon hasn’t so much as mentioned Illya’s name.

He breathes out hard. ‘He’s not so well. Better than last night, but – ’

It makes him feel sick to think about it. He doesn’t want to verbalise the possibility that Illya may die.

‘Mr Waverly wanted me to remind you to keep all of your Psych appointments,’ Patsy says. ‘ _ All _ of them, Mr Solo.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he says, automatically bringing his schedule to mind. It’s not today, is it? Selfridge is supposed to be seeing Illya today, Napoleon tomorrow. He won’t be seeing Illya today, of course. ‘Thanks, Patsy,’ he says. ‘I’d better go.’

He goes back to the cooling stack of pancakes and works through them. He wishes Angelique would turn up. Suddenly he feels ready for another round. But Angelique isn’t here and in this mood he wouldn’t risk trying to pick up a stranger. It wouldn’t be good for either of them. Maybe it’s best Angelique isn’t there anyway. Illya hates her so much. Perhaps the guilt would kill his libido like it did last night.

He sighs. It’s all just crazy. It’s crazy that Illya is lying in a hospital bed, so badly injured, all because of his job. What other profession makes these demands of people? Nothing, except for a position in the armed forces. Really, they are players in a war. It’s just a closet, underground war, where it’s never easy to see who your enemies are.

There is a slow film reel in his mind. He’s sitting in that leather chair, wearing his smart suit, hair perfectly styled, his wrists and ankles held down by chains. Illya is naked and hanging and screaming, his skin glistening with rivulets of sweat, those terrible fields of flat burning making great red patches on his skin, the skin puffing up into blisters. Illya is weeping and vomiting, and Ezekiel is holding the iron onto his body, somewhere behind him where Napoleon can’t see. He can just see the agony in Illya’s eyes, the red inside of his mouth, his teeth bared as he screams. His ears ring with Illya’s cries. All he had needed to do was give Ezekiel the information. If he’d given him the information he could have stopped him before he got to the uranium. Of course he would have been able to stop him. In the end, he always finds a way.

Angelique had looked perfect when she had stepped into the room. She had been dressed in a black twin set, her platinum hair catching gold light from the demure lamp lighting in the room. Her gun had been in her hand, and she had given no more than a glance over the scene before raising that gun and shooting Ezekiel with perfect aim, straight through the forehead. It had felt like the lifting of a terrible weight, the moment that Ezekiel dropped. He wasn’t even sure how aware Illya was of what had happened, so lost was he in pain. He had been dripping with sweat, gasping and sobbing, trying to get air into his lungs and scream and cry all at the same time. Ezekiel had been holding that curling iron in his hand. Napoleon had been terrified of what he was going to do.

What was it Angelique had said? If Napoleon had told Ezekiel the location of the uranium he would have shot them both. It was true, of course. There was no mercy in Ezekiel – although perhaps a single bullet would have been a mercy for Illya’s pain. He would have shot Illya where he was, hanging in the chains, Napoleon where he was, seated in that chair. They would have been found days, perhaps weeks later. There had been no way to save Illya, and if it hadn’t been for Angelique – 

He breathes in so sharply that his throat hurts. It’s a horrible feeling, to know that he had been utterly powerless in every way. There had been nothing at all that he could do. The only good that could have come from the situation was in not telling Ezekiel about the uranium, and saving millions of innocent lives. He hates Angelique for being the only one who could save them both, and loves her too. He doesn’t love her, of course; not like that. He admires her greatly, he finds her enormously attractive, he finds her incredible in bed. He doesn’t love her like that, but he loves her for having the mercy to save both him and Illya. She would have lost something, he supposes cynically, if she hadn’t helped. She would have lost him as a bed partner, at any rate.

He remembers sitting there in that chair, bound hand and foot, and how Angelique had bent down and kissed him. For a moment everything else had disappeared. He had been swallowed into the kiss, and everything faded away. That was what sex did, what women did for him. They made everything fade away for a little while. All the horrors of the world disappeared. Even with Angelique, even while he was keeping one ear open for trouble, for the briefest moment everything would disappear, and there was just softness and desire. He remembers her hand trailing down him. How she had kissed him, but how as soon as she was picking the lock on his wrist it all came back. Illya, the smell of burnt skin and vomit, the smell of Ezekiel’s blood. Everything had come back, and it had felt like drowning.

His plate is empty. He’s just circling the tines of the fork on the bare ceramic and it’s making little sounds that are causing other diners to wince. He puts the fork down with a clatter and swills down the rest of his coffee. He wonders briefly about calling Selfridge and asking if they can reschedule to today, but he doesn’t want to leave Illya alone for too long. Illya will be expecting him to be back, and he’s like a child in his vulnerability right now.

‘Yeah, thanks, can I have the check?’ he asks, when the waitress asks him if everything was all right.

‘You don’t want a refill on that coffee?’ she asks him. The place is half empty, and it looks better if there are more people inside.

‘No,’ he says. ‘No, thank you. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to visit a friend in hospital.’

  


((O))

  


‘Of course you can go in, but I think he’s asleep,’ the nurse tells him on his return.

Napoleon glances towards Illya’s door. It’s all quiet in there. The place smells so strongly like a hospital, full of the scents of disinfectant and food and people and cloth. The smell travels with him when he leaves, following him in his clothes, but then it fades away and when he comes back it hits him again, with all the memories of all the times he’s been trapped in this kind of place, recovering from injuries or visiting injured colleagues. It happens too often. It’s a smell he wishes he could erase from his life.

‘Did you manage to change the dressings without too much pain?’ he asks.

‘We gave him a lot of painkiller,’ she tells him with a smile. ‘He was almost out of it all through. It pained him some, but I don’t think he was conscious enough to mind.’

‘Good. Good,’ Napoleon says. ‘So I can go in?’

‘Go right on in,’ she nods. ‘He was asking for you in his more lucid moments. He’ll be glad to see you.’

Napoleon opens the door quietly and tiptoes in. Illya isn’t asleep; not quite. He’s lying in the bed with his head on a single thin pillow, his eyes half open. He does look as if he’s out of it on painkillers, but there is that glint between his eyelids that shows he’s a little awake.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon says, and Illya grunts something in return.

Napoleon goes to sit by his bed. ‘Sorry I was gone for so long,’ he says. ‘I realised I’d missed breakfast, so I went to a diner.’

‘Mmm,’ Illya replies, blinking, turning his head a little. ‘Diner. What d’you eat?’

Napoleon smiles. That seems typical of Illya, to have such an interest in what’s on his partner’s plate.

‘A stack of pancakes with maple syrup,’ he says. ‘A good ole American breakfast. It was pretty good.’

‘Ah,’ Illya says, and his tongue comes out just a little to lick his lips. ‘Yes. Better.’

Napoleon is left to interpret his words. Better than hospital food, he assumes.

‘Maybe when you’re feeling a little better I can smuggle some in,’ he tells his partner. ‘Would you like that, huh?’

‘Mmm,’ Illya says.

Napoleon subsides into silence. It’s hard to talk when your conversation partner is restricted to sleepy grunts and single words. He sees the water glass is empty and he fills it up, then he finds himself thirsty, so he takes a drink and fills it up again. He looks about the room at the medical equipment, the drip stand, the catheter bag hanging from the bed frame. Hospitals are such dreary places.

‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ he asks after a while.

‘Painkillers,’ Illya murmurs. ‘A lot.’

‘A lot of pain? A lot of painkillers?’

‘Lot of painkillers,’ Illya says. He blinks and his eyes look a little more focussed. There’s a kind of metallic sheen over the surface, a kind of reflective barrier of sleepiness, but he’s looking a little more focussed. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Very sleepy.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Napoleon says, laying a hand on his arm through the blanket. At least he knows that Illya’s arm isn’t burnt. He can touch him there. ‘The nurse said they managed to change the dressings. Was it all right?’

‘Oh,’ Illya says. ‘I don’t – Did they change them?’

‘Yeah, they changed them. She said you were pretty out of it.’

‘Must have been,’ he murmurs. ‘I’m glad.’ He blinks again, turning his head, looking about the room. ‘Time is it?’

‘Uh, about eleven – in the morning,’ Napoleon clarifies, as Illya looks puzzled. ‘Hey, do you want to sit up a little?’

‘Yeah,’ Illya says, so Napoleon starts raising the bed head just a bit. ‘Thanks. Think the antibiotics are helping.’

‘You’re feeling better, huh?’

‘Maybe,’ Illya says. ‘Not so hot. Bit clearer.’

Napoleon pats his arm softly.

‘You keep on in that direction then. No more scaring us all, all right?’

Illya smiles weakly. ‘Try my best,’ he says. ‘Didn’t like it. It wasn’t fun.’

The memory of Illya fading so quickly is still awful in Napoleon’s mind. He’s afraid of it happening again. It seems so awful for Illya to be able to fight against men with guns, to fight in fist fights, to be able to defeat anything, except for invisible organisms in his own bloodstream. That seems terrible, for Illya to be at the mercy of something like that.

‘It’s going to take you some time to get over this,’ Napoleon says seriously. ‘I’m going to have to go back out in the field, Illya, and you’ll still be in hospital.’

‘Take a partner,’ Illya says. It’s only a few words but he suddenly sounds properly awake and very serious. ‘Napoleon. You don’t go out there without a partner.’

‘I will,’ Napoleon promises him. ‘On those missions I need a partner I will take a partner. Don’t worry.’

‘Good,’ Illya says. ‘Need you to stay alive till I’m back to keep you alive. Okay?’

‘I will,’ Napoleon promises again.

‘Stay ’way from Angelique,’ Illya says. He’s starting to sound a little more slurred, and his face has paled.

‘You’re tiring yourself out,’ Napoleon warns him.

‘Napoleon,’ Illya says.

‘I can handle Angelique,’ Napoleon promises him. He wonders what Illya would say if he told him where he was last night. Maybe he won’t ever tell him that. ‘You’re tiring yourself out, Illya. Try to rest.’

He doesn’t ask Illya; he just gently lowers the bed head back down again so that he’s lying flat. Illya doesn’t complain. He lies there in silence for a little while, and his eyes drift closed, open again, closed again. Then he opens them and says, ‘Don’t have to be too grateful to her, N’poleon.’

Napoleon regards him for a moment, working out his meaning. Then he says, ‘I’m not, Illya. I promise. I haven’t – I’m not going to sleep with her because she saved your life. She doesn’t need paying for that.’

‘All right,’ Illya says. His eyes are half open, and he keeps them on Napoleon’s face. ‘All right,’ he says again.

He seems satisfied with that. He smiles a very little, and he’s smiling as he falls asleep.

Napoleon just sits there, thinking about Angelique. He hadn’t gone with her last night out of gratitude. He had gone with her because he needed someone. Not so much someone to talk to, but someone to work out his adrenaline with, and who understood what was going on in his life. It didn’t matter that they were on different sides of the fight They both had the same job, in essence, and she understood.

He doesn’t feel the need to go back to her tonight, though. He thinks maybe even if she did turn up, he’d turn her down. But he doesn’t think she will. She flits in and out of his life. He thinks, perhaps, that she asks to be sent on missions that won’t bring her up against him, or perhaps her controllers think it’s best not to send her on missions like that. So she flits in and out of his life. She’s done her job here.

  


((O))

  


Illya is in a half sleep, the pain throbbing all around him. The painkillers muddle over it, but the pain is still there, insistent and constant, like a crying child somewhere that he can’t do anything about. He’s aware of the medical smells around him. He can smell the disinfectant and the medication they put on his burns. He’s hot and his joints ache with fever, and it feels better to cling to this half sleep than to wake up into reality, because the pain is always worse then. He doesn’t know quite how long he’s been ill, but it’s been a while, and Napoleon has come and gone through the days, giving up so much time to him, keeping him company through the pain.

‘Sister,’ he hears someone say, a woman’s voice.

There are footsteps in the room, moving around. He often hears footsteps as the nurses or doctor or orderlies or cleaners come in and out. They come in with his meals on a cart that rumbles over the floor, and then there are smells of food and the clinking of metal and china. They wheel a table over his bed and encourage him to wake up enough to eat, cranking up the bed head so he’s sitting. So he eats, but it’s tiring and it makes his temperature spike and his head ache, and he’s always glad to lie flat again and disappear into this half-gloom of illness.

It’s not meal time, he thinks. He loses track of time, but he thinks he’s already had lunch and it’s too early for dinner. There’s something about the light through his eyelids that implies afternoon. He doesn’t want to be forced to wake up if he doesn’t have to, so he lies there with his eyes closed and listens to the tip-toeing footsteps and the quiet murmur of conversation, not trying to parse what they’re saying, but just letting it wash past. As long as they don’t want to change his dressings he’s happy to let them be.

The sounds wash in and out of his awareness, and then it’s quiet. It feels like it’s quiet for a long time, but then he hears a little noise, like someone clearing their throat, and that intrigues him, so he opens his eyes.

She’s sitting in the chair by his bed, hair perfectly coiffured, in a dress the dark colour of blood. She’s sitting there with a nail file just idly seeing to the shape of her nails, filing a little then lifting her hand to inspect the result, then filing a little more. He remembers the little bits of conversation he heard.

‘Sister?’ he asks. ‘You told them you were my sister?’

She reacts, looking up, eyes widening a bit. No, she isn’t attractive. Her face is too heavy set. Her nose turns up a little. He wonders what her natural hair colour is. Probably dun. She was probably overweight as a teenager, bullied by her peers. She probably learnt to fight back with her intelligence, because whatever else Angelique might be he knows that she is intelligent in the extreme.

‘Well, darling, I had to tell them something, didn’t I?’ she asks languidly.

‘ _ Sister _ ?’ he asks. ‘They know I’m a Soviet citizen.’

‘My dear brother, from whom I was forced to part when the Germans invaded, and while I escaped to America he languished in – Was it Moscow, darling? Stalingrad?’

He almost corrects her, but stops himself at the last moment. She doesn’t need to know more about him than she already does.

‘You are lucky you found a gullible nurse,’ he growls. ‘What do you want, Angelique?’

She pouts, leaning forward a little, her eyes widening in a fabricated impression of hurt.

‘I wanted to see how you are. After all, I care about Napoleon, and Napoleon cares  _ very much  _ about you.’

He tries to interpret her intonation, but he just feels too ill for decoding Angelique’s subtleties. He doesn’t understand how he is connected to Angelique in any way at all. There is Angelique and Napoleon, and there is Napoleon and himself. They are separate partnerships, very separate, very different.

‘After all, all he ever talks about is you,’ Angelique continues, pouting a little again.

Illya huffs through his nose. He can’t believe that. He hasn’t really thought about what Napoleon might talk about with Angelique. He doesn’t imagine them talking much at all. He just imagines Napoleon doing what he always does with women, and that makes him feel disgusted, so he stops thinking about it and moves on to other things.

‘I suppose I’m an easy target,’ he murmurs.

He knows where the emergency cord is. He also knows that if Angelique wanted to kill him it would be done before he could reach it. He wonders if she’s perhaps moved it out of his reach, but when he turns his head a little he can see it right there, where it should be. 

‘Oh, I haven’t come here to kill you,’ she assures him gently, with a little smile that he finds patronising. ‘Honestly, Illya, I wanted to see how you are.’

He doesn’t like her using his first name, either, but saying that would make her use it more, so he says nothing.

‘You  _ care  _ about Napoleon?’ he asks, choosing to pick on that little snippet instead of anything else. ‘Angelique, you are a Thrush agent. You put a deadly spider in the flower you gave him. Is that caring for him?’

‘After all, anything goes in love and war,’ she tuts. ‘We were on opposing sides during a mission. It was my duty to do what I could. I never actually expected that silly old trick to work. Why, the odds on the thing just scurrying away must have been close to ninety nine percent, and even if it had bitten him I dare say you would have gotten him to the hospital in time. It just would have put him out of commission for a little while. Anyway, you found it, didn’t you?’

‘I found it,’ Illya murmurs. It’s moments like that that make him seriously worry for Napoleon’s judgement around this woman. Napoleon hadn’t thought to check that flower at all. ‘I want you to stay away from him,’ he says clearly, firmly. ‘Leave him alone.’

Her eyes widen. ‘Well, is this jealousy I see? I’ve never had anyone’s eyes burn into me the way yours did during that awful fiasco with that stamp collection, and now you’re warning me away from him. Are you jealous of Napoleon – or of _ me _ ?’

He snorts a quick, derisive snort. ‘I don’t know what I’d be jealous of you for. I simply have the curious quality of wanting my partner to stay alive.’

He can feel the sweat starting to bead on his forehead. He’s forcing himself to sound less ill than he is, and he really doesn’t feel well enough for this. He feels so very tired, and the pain is starting to throb with renewed force through the painkillers. He reaches out towards the call button, but he feels so tired. Angelique watches the movement of his arm and the direction of his eyes, and she reaches for him and presses the button herself.

‘Whatever else you may think of me, darling, I don’t like to see a man in so much pain,’ she says, then smiles and adds, ‘At least, not in these circumstances. I came to see you because I was genuinely curious about how you were. Like I said, I care about Napoleon, and he cares about you.’

The door to the room opens and a nurse comes in. It’s not before time. Illya is starting to feel seriously ill and the burns are hurting terribly, and he doesn’t feel like he’ll be able to keep up this facade of composure in front of Angelique for much longer.

‘Mr Kuryakin, what did you need?’ the nurse asks, checking the watch pinned to her chest. ‘It’s time for your medication, isn’t it? Shall I show your sister out?’

‘She isn’t my sister,’ Illya says baldly, and Angelique shoots him a disappointed look. ‘Nurse, I’d rather not have any visitors apart from Mr Solo. It’s very tiring.’

The nurse looks confused for a moment, but determined not to drop her cheery attitude.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Kuryakin. I thought the lady said she was your sister. I’ll have it put in your notes, about the visitors. Miss, could you step out now?’

He breathes a sigh of relief when Angelique leaves without argument. He hadn’t realised how much he had been holding himself in her presence. He suddenly feels very weak and so, so tired. The nurse is shaking down the mercury in a thermometer and she pops it in between his lips without asking him first, and says, ‘You could do with a nap, I think, Mr Kuryakin. You’ve over-excited yourself with the lady here. You mustn’t overdo it, you know. You shouldn’t exert yourself.’

Exert himself… He’s been doing nothing but lying in bed and talking. It’s maddening that that could be considered exerting himself. But he is exhausted, and he really does feel like he needs sleep.

‘I need more painkillers,’ he says around the thermometer, and she tusks and shakes her head at him.

‘No talking with that in your mouth. Don’t worry. I’ll sort out your medication in just a moment. Everything in the proper order.’

He just wants the damn painkillers, and he feels ridiculous tears wetting his eyes. It’s hateful to be so helpless, at the whim of the medical professionals around him.

‘If you keep improving we might be able to get you back in the whirlpool bath in a day or so,’ she tells him. ‘That will help ease things, won’t it? Now.’ She whisks the thermometer from his mouth and takes a note of his temperature. ‘You’re a little warm. I’ll give you your painkillers and then you try and have a nap before dinner, okay? Your only job here is to mend.’

Illya sighs. He doesn’t like being treated like a child, but he needs the painkillers and he needs the prescribed sleep, too.

‘Thank you, nurse,’ he says sweetly, trying to sound sincere. ‘I’ll try to have a sleep.’

  


((O))

  


Napoleon comes in next afternoon with a bouquet of flowers and a box of grapes, and the smile Illya gives him on seeing them makes the expense worthwhile. The nurses will probably tut and take the flowers away, but at least Illya can enjoy them for a little while, and he will enjoy the grapes too.

‘How are you feeling, IK?’ Napoleon asks as he sits down, plonking the bouquet on Illya’s knees. The scent of the flowers and greenery rises into the room. He hopes the nurses will let him keep the flowers.

‘Not so bad, today,’ Illya says. He’s pale and his cheeks are flushed, but he does look a bit brighter than the last time Napoleon saw him. He’s awake and coherent, at least.

Napoleon eats one of the grapes, and settles back in his chair.

‘Would you like me to read to you, today?’ he asks. ‘They still haven’t brought you that radio they promised?’

‘I haven’t felt like listening to the radio. I don’t feel like listening to reading. My head aches,’ Illya says rather peevishly. Then he says more softly, ‘Thank you, Napoleon.’

The silence settles around them. Illya eats a few grapes, popping them into his mouth and seeming to savour the taste.

‘You know, you’d better get well soon,’ Napoleon says then. ‘It’s boring with you stuck in here.’

‘Haven’t you seen Angelique since you brought me in here, then?’ Illya asks.

Napoleon is afraid that his cheeks are reddening. Illya’s tone is so arch and knowing, it’s as if he’s seeing right into Napoleon’s mind.

‘A – ah – I’ve seen her, yes,’ Napoleon says, busying himself with taking another grape. To distract himself he starts to peel it, easing the skin off with his fingernail, concentrating on it as if he’s defusing a bomb.

‘And by seen her, you mean – ’

Napoleon pops the peeled grape into his mouth, chews, and swallows it.

‘A gentleman never tells, Illya,’ he says. Maybe Illya will just imagine them spending the evening at a restaurant, or walking along the waterfront. Maybe.

‘Well, I’m glad you’re having your diversions while I’m ill,’ Illya murmurs.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says seriously then. ‘I know you don’t like her. I know you don’t approve. But I’m a big boy and I can choose who to spend my time with.’

‘The woman is a black widow spider,’ Illya says darkly. His voice is so dark it makes Napoleon shiver, but he throws it off with a little shake of his shoulders.

‘In that case, she’s a very bad one, because she hasn’t killed me once after sex. Not a single time. She hasn’t even nibbled – Ah, well, actually – ’

‘Angelique came to visit me,’ Illya says then.

Napoleon straightens in his seat, electrified. He looks around the room briefly, almost as if he’s expecting to see Angelique coming out of a closet or hiding behind the curtains. Of course she isn’t there. He hasn’t seen her since that night in the hotel. She’s stayed away, just as he expected.

‘ _ Angelique _ ?’ he echoes. ‘Why on earth did she come to see you? So I suppose she told you about the hotel.’

Illya’s eyes narrow. He’s still lying flat out in bed and still looks ill, but he’s alert enough today to not let anything slip past.

‘What hotel?’ he asks.

Napoleon feels as if he could kick himself.

‘Oh, I – er – ’ he begins, then says, ‘Nothing. What hotel? I don’t know. Sorry. I don’t know what I meant.’

‘Napoleon,’ Illya says darkly. ‘What hotel?’

Napoleon sighs. Maybe he had always been going to tell Illya. Maybe he subconsciously wanted to confess. It has been rankling in his mind for the last couple of days. He doesn’t like keeping things from Illya. Partners need to be able to trust one another.

‘I – er – may have spent a night with Angelique,’ he says slowly, looking down at the glint of the light on his cufflink, on the wrist that isn’t in a cast. ‘I may have fallen asleep...’

‘Oh, Napoleon,’ Illya says in an exasperated tone, as if Napoleon has just told him about an impulse purchase or eating an entire chocolate cake while on a diet. ‘Really, is it impossible for you to keep it in your pants?’

Napoleon glances up at him, trying to judge the expression on his face. He sounds impatient and he looks impatient, but Napoleon is looking for deeper feelings than that.

‘I  _ can _ ,’ he says in a measured tone. ‘Sometimes I choose not to. It’s always a choice, Illya. I’m not entirely guided by my gonads. In fact, I take offence that you think that I am.’

Illya looks a little abashed, just a fleeting little look that passes over his face. That look passes away, though, and he says, ‘So, you spent the night with her, and you actually fell asleep with her. When was that? Not last night, because you’re my first visitor today. She came to see me yesterday. Before that, then. The night before last, or – ’ His eyes narrow, and he looks sideways at Napoleon. ‘The night I spent unconscious, with a tube down my throat?’

‘Yes, that night,’ Napoleon says softly. ‘That night, the one you spent unconscious with a tube down your throat.’

‘It’s nice to know you were worried about me,’ Illya says, and his gaze is introverted.

‘I was frantic about you, Illya,’ Napoleon replies tersely. ‘But they wouldn’t let me into the room. They told me I had to go, and I knew there was nothing I could do to help. I stepped outside. I honestly didn’t know where to go, whether to go home or to headquarters or where. Angelique rolled up beside me in her car, and – ’

‘Of course,’ Illya says wearily, with the tone of a parent who has been let down yet again by a teenage child.

‘Not  _ of course _ ,’ Napoleon says rather irritably. ‘Illya, it really isn’t up to you who I choose to sleep with. I was afraid you were dying. I didn’t know which way to turn.’

‘You fell asleep in the same room as her, Napoleon!’ Illya snaps.

Napoleon’s guilt rises because the agitation is obviously tiring his partner.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I fell asleep in the same room as her. But here I am, alive, unharmed. I honestly don’t think she had any intention of doing anything to me. We weren’t on either side of a mission. We were just – I was just – relieving stress.’

‘Ah,’ Illya says darkly.

‘If it helps, my performance was less than adequate.’

Illya’s forehead creases. ‘Really, no, it doesn’t help. I don’t really want to imagine that, Napoleon.’

‘Well, what  _ do _ you want, Illya?’ Napoleon retorts, starting to snap a little too. ‘You’re not my keeper. I can choose who I sleep with. It’s not like I’m committing adultery. I was a mess that night, Illya. I was afraid you were going to die. I couldn’t do a damn thing, so I took out some of my stress in the most inoffensive way I know how. I could have picked a fist fight or driven my car far too fast or gotten myself blind drunk, but I didn’t. I just made love with a woman. That’s all. I made love with a woman.’

‘You fell asleep with her,’ Illya says, and his voice is soft now. ‘It’s not the sleeping with her, Napoleon, although god knows I have no idea what attracts you to the woman. But you fell asleep with her. She could have done anything to you. She could have cut your throat or put a bullet through your head or injected poison into your veins. You’re my partner, Napoleon. I’m supposed to have a concern for your safety.’

‘She didn’t cut my throat. She didn’t put a bullet through my head. She didn’t inject poison into me,’ Napoleon reminds him. ‘Have you considered, Illya, that I might be able to read her a bit better than you, because I know her better?’

Illya tuts. ‘You don’t know a thing about her that isn’t in our intelligence files. She gave you a flower with a deadly spider in it, Napoleon.’

Napoleon sighs.

‘You’re not well enough for this, Illya,’ he says, because Illya’s face is starting to look more pale and he’s showing obvious signs of flagging. ‘No, seriously. I’m not just trying to get you to change the subject. You’re not well enough for this.’

‘All right,’ Illya says tiredly, raising his hand just a little from the blankets, and dropping it again. ‘All right. No, I’m not well enough for this. Let me change the subject. Have you been seeing Selfridge, too?’

Napoleon tries not to show his relief too obviously.

‘Yes, a few times,’ he nods. ‘Just a couple. I saw him this morning, actually. He said he hasn’t been back to see you yet.’

‘No. No, the doctors have told him I need to be stronger,’ Illya says. He sounds quite relieved at his reprieve. ‘He won’t come back until they give him direct permission.’

‘You’re glad of that?’ Napoleon asks him.

Illya shrugs minutely. ‘I’ve had a lot of thinking time in my more wakeful moments. I’ve churned over a lot of it in my mind. I can’t remember what I said when they brought me in. I must have said something that worried them badly, but I can’t remember a word of it.’

‘Something about me,’ Napoleon says gravely, leaning forward a little. ‘It was something about my not helping you, as far as I’ve gathered.’

Illya regards him for a long moment. His eyes look very bright and blue in his pale face. Napoleon thinks about the burns that are hidden beneath the blankets and then there’s a flashing memory of Illya hanging there and screaming, and he feels nauseous.

‘Maybe it was something like that,’ Illya says finally. ‘It must have been. I don’t blame you for any of this, Napoleon. I promise you. I know you couldn’t do anything. You did your job.’

‘It was – ’ Napoleon takes a breath, considering his words, because much as he feels he suffered, Illya’s suffering was infinitely worse. ‘It was hell,’ he says finally. ‘It was utter hell, seeing him put you through that. I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know, but it was hellish watching him torture you.’

Illya is silent, and Napoleon tries to read what’s passing behind his eyes. It’s impossible. Illya is such a closed book so much of the time anyway, and it’s impossible to read him now. He wishes that he could know what Illya said in that awful time, when he was almost delirious with pain. They had taken Illya away from him as soon as the ambulance got into the hospital, and he couldn’t have stayed anyway because he had to chase after Angelique and that uranium. Perhaps if he hadn’t had that duty he would have fought to stay and he would have heard what Illya had said. In the ambulance he had been fading in and out, slurring and confused and dosed up on painkillers, and half of what he had said hadn’t even been in English.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon says, reaching out and putting a hand over his. Illya’s skin is warmer than his. He’s still a little fevered.

Illya doesn’t move or respond to his touch, except by letting his eyes close. Napoleon sits there, watching him. Illya’s face has changed. He couldn’t say exactly how it’s changed, but his expression has moved from something controlled to less controlled. He can see moisture darkening his eyelashes where they edge his eyelids. Illya isn’t crying, exactly, but he must be very close. Napoleon just sits there with his hand over Illya’s, and unconsciously his thumb strokes slowly over Illya’s skin, and after a while he can see that Illya is asleep.

He takes his hand back and rests it in his lap. He sits there in the chair, looking down at his wrists, one bruised and one with the cast on it. He remembers sitting in the chair in that room, the chains on his arms. It comes over him in flashes. It keeps coming over him, like waves pounding in to shore. Whenever that happens he feels like he’s falling. For a moment it’s as if he’s in empty space. There is the memory, and then the bottom dropping out of his stomach, and he has to stare at the room around him to ground himself, to remind himself of the here and now.

That’s something he should tell Selfridge, probably. He supposes Selfridge would want to hear that.

He suddenly can’t take the cloistered, stifling atmosphere of the hospital room. Illya is sound asleep, and he can’t take sitting here. He takes his crutch but he doesn’t touch it to the floor as he leaves the room, afraid of the noise waking Illya again, because he has to get out of here. When he passes through the door a level of pressure lifts, but it’s still unbearable in here. It still smells of antiseptic and cleaning fluid and all those hospital smells, and he doesn’t stop until he’s outside on the street. He stands there, just stands by the wall, watching the moving traffic and the blur of pedestrians, and he fumbles in his pocket for his cigarette case. He hardly smokes; even less since he started partnering with Illya because Illya hates the smell so much, but he always carries a case and a lighter, because they’re useful conversation openers in the spy business. Besides, he has a couple of U.N.C.L.E. tricks hidden inside. So he opens up the case and takes out a single white stick, and he flicks the lighter. His hand shakes and he fumbles, and then he tries again, slipping the cigarette between his lips, conjuring a flame, holding the flame to the cigarette. He inhales steadily, sucking that spark into the cigarette, until he can feel the heat and the taste of it filling his mouth.

That first drag is good. He breathes it deeply into his lungs, and it feels so good. He lets the smoke stream out between his lips, and a kind of calm starts to settle around him. He watches the movements of traffic and people through that haze now, and their movements seem a little smoother, a little less jerky.

He breathes in again. God. No wonder he hardly ever touches these now. He doesn’t like drinking or smoking for anything but the pleasure of drinking or smoking. He’s always conflicted when he uses those things to calm himself down. It’s too easy, in his line of business, to let drugs do the work, instead of having a healthy mind. Maybe he’s never really had a healthy mind, though. Can he really be healthy mentally, to want to do the job that he does?

He drops the cigarette onto the ground and crushes the fire out of it with the end of his crutch. He doesn’t want to use nicotine to calm himself. He doesn’t want to remember Illya hanging in chains, Ezekiel using his cigarette to burn him in those awful, angry spots.

He half wishes that Angelique would draw up in her car, but isn’t that as bad as using alcohol or cigarettes? Maybe it’s worse. Illya is right. Angelique is a dangerous woman. He does know her better than Illya does. He’s sure of that. He thinks he can read her. But she is a dangerous woman, and he isn’t in a fit state at the moment to keep up his guard. He thinks of the women who work at headquarters. There’s always someone there who’ll come home with him and ease his stress. But his stress feels too dark right now. He doesn’t want to inflict that on one of them, either.

There’s a building a block away where they know him, where he has pretty much free rein. He walks down the street, his crutch clicking on the concrete sidewalk, and he goes into the building and takes the elevator to the top floor. There, he slips along the corridor and uses a pick to open the door to the roof. He goes up the short flight of stairs and out into the open air, and at last he feels a measure of freedom. The air is clearer up here, and the wind is a little stronger. The traffic sounds are far, far below him. He stands there on the roof and just breathes, in and out, in and out, until he feels calm and level again. Maybe he doesn’t need Selfridge. Maybe he just needs some open air, and time.

  


((O))

  


Every day Illya crawls a little closer to wellness, crawls out of the awful, fevered depths he had been trapped in. Some of the burns have received skin grafts. He has crawled in and out of surgery, and seared with pain. Some of them are just thick scabs. It’s hard to look at the burns, but he looks at them in fascination each time the dressings are peeled away, seeing the bright pink of new skin and the puckered edges of damage. It makes him sick to look at them, but he looks.

‘You’ll recover full function, certainly, Mr Kuryakin,’ the doctor told him seriously, when he checked those burns between his legs. ‘I want the catheter to stay in for a while longer, but I’m certain you’ll recover full function.’

Illya wonders if anyone will ever want to look at him again, unless the scars heal better than he expects, but then he’s not Napoleon, at least. Sex isn’t the centre of his life. It would be nice for the catheter to be gone, but he reassures himself with the thought that at least he doesn’t have to get out of bed to use the toilet much at the moment.

When the memories of his torture aren’t playing on his mind, it’s Angelique who seeps into his thoughts. Angelique and Napoleon. He should be there to partner Napoleon, to watch his back, to keep him safe on missions. At least he can take another agent on missions, but who will guard him against Angelique? He wonders, not for the first time, if he should mention something to Waverly. Would Napoleon ever forgive him? It would be obvious who had told him. Napoleon would know.

He’s lying there in his bed, thinking about picking up a book, thinking about turning on the radio that they’ve finally brought him, but not moving to do either thing. Every time he twists his torso it hurts, so he finds himself procrastinating, lying without moving for dozens of minutes at a time, just ruminating on the bland little room and what happened and what his future might hold. The nurses tell him he should move more, to guard against bed sores and blood clots, but it just hurts so much to move.

‘Good afternoon, little flower,’ Napoleon says, coming in through the door and brandishing a bouquet at him.

‘You’re late,’ Illya remarks blandly.

Napoleon makes as if to toss the bouquet at him, but at the last moment he keeps hold. The flowers are bright and cheerful and their scent fills the room, pushing away some of the medical smells.

‘I’m not a minute over time. I was told you’d be occupied until two.’

‘Ah,’ Illya nods. ‘They were going to take me to the whirlpool but they cancelled.’

‘I thought they weren’t giving you whirlpool therapy with the skin grafts?’ Napoleon asks curiously.

‘The doctor says they’re healed enough to tolerate the agitation now, so they booked in a session, but they had to rearrange.’

‘When did they rearrange for?’ Napoleon asks, flicking a look at his watch.

‘Any time now, I think. They are never on time.’

‘Such is human frailty,’ Napoleon says cheerfully, and he sits down in the familiar chair next to the bed.

‘How are the limbs?’ Illya asks, moving uncomfortably so he’s turned a little more towards his friend.

Napoleon taps his fingers on his wrist cast. ‘I can’t complain,’ he says. ‘The bruises are gone. The bones are knitting. They were only hairline cracks.’

‘You obviously didn’t struggle hard enough,’ Illya murmurs.

For a moment something passes in Napoleon’s face. A little shadow crosses his features, and then he clears his throat very softly.

‘I didn’t mean it at all like that,’ Illya says softly. He’s aware that it still haunts Napoleon, just as it haunts him.

‘No, I know,’ Napoleon says. ‘No, I think we’re okay now, aren’t we?’

‘We are,’ Illya says, ‘apart from that I can’t say you didn’t struggle hard enough without you taking it seriously, and feeling guilty.’

Napoleon sighs. ‘I think I might always feel guilty.’

Illya shakes his head. He wishes he could pull back his words, but there’s no help for it now.

‘Well, that’s ridiculous, Napoleon,’ he says. ‘You watched me being tortured, and I suffered torture. You felt an unbearable guilt, and I felt an unbearable guilt. We’ve both talked it out to death. We both know that we were equally helpless, and guilt is ridiculous. Don’t we?’

There’s that sigh again. ‘Yes, I guess we do,’ Napoleon says. ‘You’re right, I have talked it out to death. But I still dream about it, and you must dream about it – don’t you?’

Illya grimaces a little. ‘Yes, I dream about it,’ he says simply. ‘But I don’t think if you’d struggled harder you would have been able to help me.’

‘I wouldn’t have,’ Napoleon says plainly. ‘There was – nothing that I could do. I’m trying to come to terms with that. That’s the hardest thing, according to Selfridge. My feeling of helplessness.’

Illya smiles faintly. ‘Well, we were both helpless,’ he says. ‘Utterly helpless.’

A silence falls in the room. They sit there like that for a little time, and Illya works on not letting the memories crawl through into the front of his mind and take over. He’s working hard on not letting that happen so much, and slowly it’s working. He thinks of it a little less every day. That’s when Angelique creeps in, instead.

‘Well,’ Napoleon says. He clears his throat, then produces a bag of grapes, and smiles. ‘I brought these, since you’ve proven can go through a pound a day.’

‘At this rate it’s very possible I’ll turn into a grape – or maybe wine,’ Illya says.

‘I’m sure you’d make the sweetest wine,’ Napoleon replies, and he plucks a grape from the stalk. Instead of eating it himself, he proffers it towards Illya’s lips. Unthinking, Illya parts his lips and takes it, and the sweetness explodes in his mouth. Then he wonders if Napoleon drops grapes into Angelique’s mouth. He wonders how often Napoleon has seen her since he entered the hospital, how much they have shared. Why does that give him such a burning feeling inside?

‘Are you going to carry on your appointments?’ he asks.

‘With Selfridge?’ Napoleon asks, then, knowingly, he asks, ‘With Angelique? You know, Illya, she’s not a public service. I don’t make appointments for every second Tuesday. Nothing like that. Just sometimes – we both have needs, and we suit each other.’

Illya sighs. ‘That’s sweet, Napoleon. It will be so sweet and romantic, until she drops poison into your drink or stabs you between the shoulder blades.’ 

‘I haven’t seen her since that night,’ Napoleon says softly then. He leans forward a little in his chair, widening his legs so he can lean his arms on his knees. ‘Illya, I saw her on that night when you were so ill, but I haven’t seen her since. I have no idea where she is or what she’s doing – and I haven’t tried to find out, either. I can take or leave her. When she’s here and available I’m very happy to take her, but I don’t feel a chasm of emptiness when she’s gone.’

‘I’m not sure who to feel most sorry for,’ Illya murmurs, because really, he doesn’t. It seems such an empty way of life, to just sleep with a person when they offer themselves up, but feel nothing for them in any other way.

‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Illya,’ Napoleon says, and there’s something different in his voice, a kind of hardness that Illya doesn’t often hear directed towards him.

There isn’t any way Napoleon could have anything more permanent in his life, Illya knows. All of his relationships are torn apart by U.N.C.L.E.. Over the years, he thinks, Napoleon has become wary of anything deep because losing people is hard. There is always loss when he has to break dates without a moment’s notice, sometimes leaving halfway through, sometimes disappearing and not returning for weeks. He can’t tell them about his work. It’s like being a kind of Superman in less colourful clothing, never revealing your secret identity, hurrying around saving the world and not letting those you love know, for fear of them being hurt, or hurting you. At least Angelique knows the business. At least not getting attached to her means that Napoleon doesn’t have to fear that moment when she dies.

‘I don’t feel sorry for you,’ Illya says, but he’s not sure he really means it. Maybe he feels sorry for them both, Napoleon and himself together. They’ve chosen a difficult life.

‘Oh, Mr Kuryakin,’ a nurse says, bustling into the room. ‘I’ve come to take you down for your bath. I didn’t realise you had a visitor. Afternoon, Mr Solo.’

She gives Napoleon that look all women give him. Illya is familiar with almost all the nurses here now, and they’re familiar with him. They’re familiar with his sulks and his anger as well as his sweeter moments. They know that flirting is lost on him, and professional enough not to bend that patient-carer relationship. But Napoleon is different. Napoleon is healthy, if a little broken, and free for the taking.

Napoleon returns her smile, and Illya suppresses a sigh.

‘Could Mr Solo come down with me?’ he asks on a whim. He isn’t quite ready to let go of that companionship. The pain is strong today, and Napoleon helps to take his mind off it.

She looks between them, biting her lip.

‘It’s a little irregular, Mr Kuryakin,’ she tells him.

He gives her his most blue-eyed look. ‘It’s good to have someone to talk to,’ he says. ‘It’s very painful with nothing to distract me.’

She puts her hands on her hips, and shakes her head. ‘Well, just this one time.’

‘Do you mind, Napoleon?’ Illya thinks to ask, and Napoleon smiles.

‘I don’t mind. I’ve wanted to see what this place is like. I’ve been starting to suspect this is secretly a health spa and you’ve just checked in for the luxury treatments.’

  


((O))

  


They’ve spent enough time sharing showers at the gym, enough time visiting Turkish baths, enough time dragging their bodies through the most awful situations, that there’s not an ounce of self-consciousness left between them. Illya hung for so long in those chains, naked before Napoleon. How could he feel self-conscious now? But he finds that he does, as he carefully and painfully removes his clothes to step into the bath. Perhaps it’s the state of his body that makes him flinch from Napoleon’s gaze. It must be terrible to look on, with the burns all over him, and the sites where they harvested skin for grafts. He feels like an awful patchwork of pain and disfigurement.

Napoleon shows no sign of embarrassment. He just helps Illya, steadying him and helping as he eases the cloth of his clothes away from the most painful places. Illya is so conscious of the catheter and the bandages from which it comes, which will have to come off in the water. He’s conscious of the damage that has been done to him. For a moment he feels dizzy.

‘Hey. Okay there?’ Napoleon asks as he wavers.

‘Yes,’ he says, not nodding because he doesn’t want his head to spin.

‘You need to sit down?’

‘I need to get in the water,’ he says.

It’s an immediate relief, not too cold and not too warm, soaking softly over his skin, supporting his limbs, letting him rest without touching anything solid. He sighs as he leans into the water, and he looks sideways and catches Napoleon’s smile.

‘I told you I thought it was a health spa,’ Napoleon says.

‘Well it is, in a way,’ Illya acknowledges. ‘I’m here for my health.’

‘I’ll leave you to lie for a little while,’ the nurse tells him. ‘I want those dressings to be good and soaked.’

She won’t leave him alone with Napoleon, but she steps across the room and sits down on a chair, and brings out a book. The noise of the moving water gives a certain veil of privacy. Illya rests his head back and closes his eyes and just lets the easing of the pain wash through him. It’s a wonderful feeling, something the painkillers can’t approach.

‘All right, Illya?’ Napoleon asks him.

He blinks his eyes open, and nods.

‘I’m all right. It feels good. I just – I wish the whole process of healing didn’t take so long,’ he says in sudden frustration.

There are a hundred things he could be doing right now, a hundred places he could be. If only he could be fixed, and out of here. When he was lost so far in pain and infection he hadn’t felt it, but now he’s getting better he can feel how wonderful it would be just to be able to go outside, to walk around easily on his own two feet, to be able to go home to his own apartment and live according to his own rules.

‘You’re getting there,’ Napoleon says gently. ‘I can see how much you’ve come on. Look at that burn on your chest.’

The dressing is peeling off. Illya looks down at the pink skin, at the shininess of that new surface that’s being revealed as the scabs peel away. There’s no chest hair there, of course, and the skin is odd and taut, as if covered in a thin layer of plastic. It doesn’t look like his skin at all.

‘I’m going to be scarred for the rest of my life,’ he says soberly.

‘Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?’ Napoleon smiles.

Illya shakes his head. ‘Don’t be silly, Napoleon. Of course I’m going to be scarred. Skin can’t miraculously recover from something like this.’

‘What about – ’ Napoleon begins, and, decorously, he nods down towards Illya’s groin.

Illya moves a hand in the water and touches it to the soaked dressings. The dressings are less than they had been. The patch of burning is shrinking away as it heals.

‘They’ve told me I should regain full function,’ he says rather awkwardly. ‘If I ever wanted children, it shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Ah,’ Napoleon says, and his smile is glad, but perhaps he’s also a little embarrassed, because his eyes slip briefly away.

Illya teases at the dressings there. The adhesive is loosening in the water, and he pulls it back delicately between finger and thumb. It’s hard to see in the churning water, but it all looks better. It’s painful, but it looks better.

‘I’ll be back on the U.N.C.L.E. dating circuit in no time,’ he says.

He doesn’t look at Napoleon, though. The scars feel like a terrible thing at the moment. It is so much of his body. They are so invasive, so ever-present. The scars from the cigarette burns are just little roundels on his skin, but the iron burns are great flags across his body. He wonders if anyone will ever be able to look at that without flinching away.

‘Of course you will,’ Napoleon says, and then he makes sure that Illya is looking at him when he says, ‘Of course you will. Anyone worth their salt won’t be put off by a few scars.’

Illya holds his gaze. ‘Can you look at them?’ he asks.

‘I’m looking at them now,’ Napoleon replies. ‘You’re the man you’ve always been, Illya.’

Illya feels a little warmth inside him, a kind of glowing that fills his chest. It will be so good to be out of this hospital and back at home, back at work, back in real life. The scars will all be under his clothes. His burnt lips were never as badly burned as the rest of his body, and now it’s hard to see the fading scars. In a suit and tie he’ll look like he always did. But he’ll know the scars are there beneath his clothes. Maybe he’ll go on dates, but when he starts to unbutton his shirt the woman will turn away in disgust. Maybe every time he’ll have to say seriously,  _ there’s something you should know _ . Who wants to take on a man like that?

  


((O))

  


When he entered the hospital he had nothing. Like a new born baby, he had been brought in without even clothes. He had been shaking and slurring and mindless with drugs, saying things he can’t remember now, crying with the pain. Now he is leaving, and his possessions are enough to fit in a carry-all bag. It is Napoleon who carries the bag, despite Illya’s protests.

‘I’m out of my casts now,’ Napoleon insists. ‘Let me carry it. It’s good to be able to use my arm.’

So Illya lets him carry it, and when Napoleon first puts strain through the strap he falters and gives Illya a look, and asks, ‘May I ask what you’ve got in here?’

‘Books, mostly,’ Illya replies smoothly. ‘Most of them ones you brought me.’

‘Oh, so it’s my fault,’ Napoleon says, but he hoists the bag without further complaint.

Illya still feels unsteady on his feet. He’s not sure exactly what’s causing the unsteadiness, but perhaps it’s because he’s spent so many weeks just lying in bed. When he walks out of his room and into the ward beyond it feels strange to be there in day clothes, shoes on his feet, heading for the door. The nurses smile at him and kiss him on the cheek and wish him luck, and it feels like too much. He feels like he needs a crutch, but there isn’t any specific reason, just the weakness and pain all through him.

‘Car’s just outside,’ Napoleon says.

‘You got a parking space right by the hospital?’ Illya asks in amazement.

‘Well, I may be relying on my U.N.C.L.E. authority to nullify any tickets,’ Napoleon tells him with a grin. ‘I don’t want you walking too far. You’re not up to it.’ He pats Illya on the arm. ‘Come on. Let’s get to the elevator.’

It’s wonderful to be out in the open air at last. It’s a crisp, freezing day and there are only a few brown-bronze leaves hanging from the branches of the trees on the street. Napoleon’s car is there, and sure enough there’s a ticket tucked behind the windscreen wiper blade, but Napoleon pockets it and says, ‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s get you home.’

His apartment smells like a place that has been abandoned for weeks. Illya has hardly thought about it until now, but he supposes the fridge will be full of rotting food, his plants will be dead, there will be letters piled up in the mailbox downstairs. But he feels dizzy from climbing the stairs, and all he’s interested in for a moment is getting to the couch and sinking down onto the softness.

‘Put your feet up,’ Napoleon says. ‘I’ll go make you a cup of coffee.’

Illya presses a hand over his forehead, wiping away a sheen of sweat.

‘My milk will be solid by now,’ he says.

‘Don’t be silly. I came round yesterday and stocked the fridge and turned on the heating,’ Napoleon tosses over his shoulder as he goes towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve been coming over every few days to check the mail and water the plants.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says in surprise. He had no idea.

He looks around, and his apartment is surprisingly neat and tidy.

‘You cleaned?’ he asks. Then, suspiciously, ‘You didn’t get one of the girls to come over and clean my apartment, Napoleon?’

Napoleon doesn’t answer from the kitchen. Illya can just see him through the door, moving to and fro. He stands up to go through to him, but he’s suddenly dizzy, and he sits down again just as Napoleon returns.

‘I thought you were putting your feet up,’ Napoleon reproves him. ‘Come on, no running around. You don’t need to do that. That’s why I’m here.’

‘I’m not ill, Napoleon,’ he protests.

‘No, but you’re very pale. Stay there and get your breath. You’ve been in bed for weeks.’

Illya grumbles, but he appreciates the care. Then he asks again, ‘Napoleon, you didn’t get one of the girls from Headquarters to come over and clean, did you?’

Napoleon laughs. ‘Do you have a problem seeing me in a frilly apron?’

‘I have a problem seeing you cleaning,’ Illya admits. Napoleon employs a cleaner at home, U.N.C.L.E.-ratified, of course. ‘Do you even know how to clean?’

‘I’ll have you know I cleaned this entire place myself,’ Napoleon tells him with just a hint of pride. ‘I knew you’d hate someone else doing it.’

‘Did you move my journals?’ Illya asks.

‘No, I did not move your journals – only enough to clean the dirt from underneath them and the dust from on top of them. I also found out exactly what care each of your houseplants needed, and treated them accordingly. They’ve been flourishing away from your tender care.’

‘Thank you, Napoleon,’ Illya says sincerely, choosing to ignore the veiled barb about his gardening skills. His plants usually muddle along as he slips in and out of the country, in and out of hospital, in and out of remembering to water them.

‘I even made your bed for you. I bought you new brushed cotton sheets. Yours were in dire need of upgrading. I cleaned out your fridge and defrosted your freezer. I didn’t go as far as polishing your flatware, but I hope you appreciate all the work I’ve done for you.’

‘I do,’ Illya promises. He feels almost overwhelmed at the levels to which Napoleon has gone. He’s used to living in a state of average chaos. ‘I only wish I’d got a photograph of you going about your work.’

Napoleon laughs. ‘If you had, I would destroy the film.’

‘If I had, you would never find the film,’ Illya replies.

Napoleon goes back into the kitchen, and returns with a tray bearing Illya’s coffee pot, two cups, and a jug of milk. He puts it down on the table, then sits in the armchair.

‘Go on,’ he nods at Illya on the couch. ‘I’m sitting here so you can put your feet up, so put your feet up.’

Illya grumbles and lifts his socked feet back up onto the couch. The scars of the burns hurt as he moves, but it’s such a small pain compared to the searing agony he felt for weeks.

‘I won’t be able to put my feet up at work,’ he says.

‘You won’t be back at work for at least another two weeks,’ Napoleon reminds him. ‘That’s the point of convalescing. You get to potter around your apartment for a while, getting your strength back. Maybe you can dedicate some time to those potted plants, huh?’

Illya grunts. ‘Where are you going to be tomorrow? Idaho? Mexico? Egypt?’

‘Florence, actually,’ Napoleon says, and he sounds a little guilty. ‘Florence, and then I’ll see where the mission takes me.’

‘And you’ll come home,’ Illya says. He feels out of control. He has done ever since he found himself in hospital, trapped there while Napoleon went out on missions all over the world.

‘Of course I’ll come home,’ Napoleon promises. ‘I’ll always come home. In fact, I thought I might come home to here for a little while,’ he adds, turning his coffee cup in his hands. ‘I thought you might appreciate the company.’

‘I would,’ Illya says, and he really means it.

It will be nice to have some time alone after being stuck in hospital with nurses coming and going all the time, but there will be plenty of that while Napoleon is on missions. When Napoleon is back in the country he thinks he’ll appreciate the company deeply. Napoleon will be able to tell him about where he’s been and what he’s done. Illya will be able to do some of the paperwork for him, to give himself something to do. He’ll start coming in to the office slowly, a few mornings a week, perhaps, and work up to full days. Then he’ll be allowed on missions again, and when Napoleon steps onto an aeroplane Illya will be alongside him, going somewhere with purpose to do something that sends the blood thrilling through his veins. Until then, his excitement will have to be vicarious, living on the back of Napoleon’s adventures.

He feels dizzy now, exhausted. He’s a while away from being able to join in on missions. He’s a few days away from being able to manage more than ordering take out or putting toast under the grill without having to take a long rest to recover. His apartment is excitement enough, for now. The rest will come in time.

  



End file.
